


Rangers With Attitude

by Smokeycut



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2018-12-10 17:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11696748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: The Power Rangers think that Earth is safe after their battle with Rita Repulsa. Unbeknownst to them, Rita is planning her revenge. Will the Rangers be able to repel her monsters? Or will their personal lives stand in the way?





	1. Invasion?

It was cold, far too cold. A small shell of ice had formed on Rita's skin during her drift through space, but she was more than aware of her surroundings. When her body made impact with the moon's surface, when the shell broke, she refused to take a moment's rest. There was a fire roaring inside of her. She wouldn't be cold for long. Her fingers curled around her staff, and she looked to the Earth with contempt. 

"You haven't won. There won't be a single day of peace for you, _Rangers_. I will _destroy you_ , and _everything_ you love," she seethed, while green mystical energy crackled around her, warming her body and sewing up her wounds. 

With her vow made, Rita turned her back on the blue planet and looked out into the distance. All the tools she needed for her revenge were on the moon, and the rangers didn't even know it. She just had to find the crater, and the prison's entrance. Staff in hand, she began walking. The Rangers wouldn't know what hit them until it was too late.

•••

"Trini! Stay with Kim and Zack! I'm going after Billy!" Jason shouted out orders as he ran, splitting off and peeling away from his team. Dodging heavy laser fire and striking what few enemies he could, he prayed that he wasn't too late. The sky was black, but the night's stars were obscured by the gigantic spaceship that was hanging up above. Robotic foot soldiers were pumped out in wave after wave, and Billy was alone at the Krispy Kreme, surrounded on all sides. 

Trini raised an armored arm, blocking one of the robot's blows, and punched a hole in it's chest with her free hand. With a sputter and spark, the machine fell, lifeless, only for several more to take it's place. Just a few feet away, Zack and Kim were fighting back to back. Heaps of destroyed invaders lay at their feet, but they knew they couldn't keep it up much longer. 

"You pieces of shit!" Zack cried out, kicking a robot into three of it's allies and toppling them over. "First you destroy our zords, then our town?!" 

"Calm down, Zack!" Trini ordered while ripping off a robot's leg. She swung the stolen limb at another enemy's head, connecting the blow perfectly and following it up with a snap kick. "We gotta keep clear heads!"

"Trini's right!" Kim shouted her agreement, flipping over a robot and letting Zack elbow it in the face. As she came down, she brought her foot down on another machine's shoulder, crumpling the metal and deactivating one more foe.

As his team struggled with wave after wave of foot soldiers, Jason spotted Billy in the distance. He had barricaded himself inside of the Krispy Kreme, but a few robots had found their way in through a shattered window. Extending his arm blade, Jason carved a path through the wall of machines that surrounded the store, and dove in through the window, joining his friend.

"You okay, Billy?" The Red Ranger asked, stabbing a machine through the chest as it clambered in through the window after him.

"I dunno if I can do this Jason," Billy admitted, kneeling down next to a damaged but active robot. It's chest was torn open, revealing the high tech engine that drove it. The Blue Ranger was tinkering with it in ways Jason couldn't come close to comprehending.

"You have to, Billy. You're our only hope right now, okay?" Jason told him, holding off the machines while his friend worked. "If anyone can do this, it's you!"

"Right. Right, I gotta do it," Billy muttered to himself, psyching himself up as he tampered with the robot. "I know machines better than the rest of you, maybe even better than Alpha." He pulled another one closer, and ripped it's head off of it's shoulders. "And Alpha's a robot, so he knows machines. But I've never seen these kinds of machines, so this is all just guessing. For all I know this is gonna blow up in our faces." He popped it's head open and pulled out a computer chip, then brought that over to the engine of the first robot. "But maybe it'll work, y'know? I really hope this works," he said, attaching wires to the CPU, and connecting it to the engine. Finally, he opened a plate on his right arm and pulled a small device out of it, then plugged that into the engine as well.

Jason looked at Billy, his helmet hiding his desperation. Over the armor's comms, he could hear Trini, Kimberly and Zack struggling, and he knew they didn't have much left in them. He silently pleaded with his best friend to hurry, to pull this off. He couldn't fail, not here. 

There was a flash of blue light. Billy cried out and laughed, looking at Jason as time seemed to slow to a crawl. The robots around the building began falling to the ground, lifeless. Somehow, Billy had done it. Jason didn't know if it was a virus or an EMP or what, but Billy had done it. He brought the machines down. Each and every one. Including the spaceship that was hanging above their town. Jason closed his eyes and smiled as it came crashing down on top of them, grateful that it was over.

"Mission accomplished, Rangers," Zordon said proudly. The wreckage around them vanished in a blink of light, and they found themselves in his spaceship once again. "Some day, in the distant future, your power coins would be found again, and the Zeo Crystal would have defenders once more."

"Yeah, that's really great," Trini snarked. "Maybe next time though, we don't get crushed at the end of the simulation?"

"Yeah, I gotta be honest, Zordon, I'm not a fan of the dying part." Billy stood up, his armor disappearing back into his body. His teammates followed suit as they regrouped in the center of the training suite. 

"It is vital that you understand how to protect the Zeo Crystal from every possible enemy, even if it means giving your lives. Just as my team gave our lives, you must be prepared to do the same. Now that Alpha 5 has fully repaired the ship's holographic capabilities, we can train in scenarios where death is the only option."

"Correction," Jason spoke up, raising a finger. " _We_ can train in these scenarios. You just watch."

Zordon was silent for a moment, admitting in his own way that Jason had a point. "You performed admirably, all of you," he noted, finally. "Take tomorrow off, you've earned it."

The Rangers filed out of the room, but they weren't as unhappy as their words would have implied. As much as they all hated those kinds of scenarios, they understood Zordon's reasoning. They just wished that they could relish their victory sometimes. Rather than heading home, however, they went to the center of the ship, where they had first met Alpha 5. There, in the center of the room, a large couch was resting. 

In the time since Rita's defeat, the teenagers had mostly begun focusing on repairing Zordon's ship. Most of it's various rooms and systems had fallen into disrepair, but with Alpha's direction, it wasn't hard to fix them. Aside from the training suite, which was used for more advanced training than the pit could provide, they had been setting up the ship's living quarters with their own furnishings. Jason and Trini lifted the couch from opposite ends and moved it into the living quarters, while Kim directed them on where to set it down. 

Zack flopped down on the sofa once it had been moved into position, giggling as he got comfortable. "Oh man, I could live on this thing," he purred.

"Yeah, well, you're lucky my parents got a new one," Kimberly said as she looked around the room. An old television from Jason's house, a couch from her's, chairs that Zack and Trini had gotten from who knows where, and a rug from Billy's room had led to the room being made their own. 

Jason slipped out of the room as his team gathered around and relaxed, and made his way to the command center, where Zordon was waiting. Jason leaned against the wall and looked at the face pressing it's way out of the wall. The now deceased Red Ranger watched his successor, waiting for Jason to speak his mind.

"We need to give the team something different next time. We're not taking a day off tomorrow, or the day after, but they need something to build themselves up," Jason told Zordon. "We're doing great, but these simulations... dying every time? That's not exactly building morale."

"You are right," Zordon admitted. "It is your team, and your call, Jason. With that said, you must understand the gravity of the situation. The threats that you face will not go easy on you. Every battle will be like the one you had with Rita, and the threats you'll face may be far more difficult to stop. The Machine Empire, the witch Bandora, Divatox and her space pirates, I... I merely want to prepare you all."

"And we will be. You can count on us," Jason said with a nod. With that, he turned and left the room. "See you tomorrow, Zordon."

"Jason, wait!" Zordon called out. "Before you go, I have one question. As leader of the Power Rangers, it would be for the best if you decided on a lieutenant. Someone who you can trust to be your second in command. Among your team, who would you trust with that position?" 

Jason paused in the doorway, and scratched at his chin as he thought about it. "I'll get back to you on that, alright?" 

The conversation over, Jason went back to the living quarters, where he found Trini holding Zack in a headlock.

"Okay, Billy, you see this? This is how you do a sleeper hold. Ya gotta be careful though, or you could do some serious damage."

"Trini, let Zack go," Jason said with a tired sigh. 

"Fine," she groaned, dropping Zack and letting him fall to the floor. She folded her arms and sat down on the couch as Zack picked himself up. "But you better stick around while we watch Cutthroat Kitchen. We're gambling on who wins."

Jason cracked a smile at that and joined his team, tossing $20 into the pot, which was apparently just their power coins in a circle on the floor. He knew his team didn't have a thing to worry about. They handled Rita, they handled simulation after simulation, they could take anything the universe threw at them. And they could relax with headlocks and cooking competitions afterwards. 

•••

Rita stepped up to the edge of the crater and purred. Burrowed away, underground and on the dark side of the moon, was a treasure trove for the Eltarian witch. Something that her team of Rangers had hidden away where nobody would look, never realizing that one of their own would someday use it to destroy the planet they so dearly cared for. A prison. One that contained each and every enemy who they had captured alive. 

Rita slid her power coin along the ground, and where it touched, an opening appeared. With the crater split in half by a large fissure, exposing a winding staircase, Rita began making her way down into the depths of the prison. When she reached the bottom, she held out her staff and used it's green light as a torch. She walked between row upon row of alien criminals who had been encased in stone. It was her own magic that sealed them, a vital tool in the Power Rangers' battle to protect the Zeo Crystal. Now it would be her magic that released them.

"Where are you, my devious little friend?" She asked aloud, playfully drumming her fingers along the face of one prisoner. "I'll let you out if you promise to play nice. Tit... for tat..." Rita whispered, pressing her staff against the statue's back.

In a burst of green light, he was freed. It felt as though he had died and been reborn, with Rita's magic giving him new life, a new purpose. The short, white furred alien looked at his savior and stared in shock. The last time he had seen her, she was surrounded by her friends, and was encasing him in his prison. Now she stood alone, wearing a twisted, half complete version of her old armor. She didn't even look like an Eltarian. She looked almost human to him. She looked demented. She looked _heavenly_.

"Do you know why I freed you?" Rita asked, whispering in his ear.

"You want my monsters, don't you?" The alien replied, shaking with fear. He was never a fighter, only a builder. His creations had always done all the work.

"That's right. I want the Zeo Crystal, just like you did, once upon a time. You help me, I help you. No need to be afraid of me, Finnster, I won't bite. Much." Rita stepped back and smiled almost genuinely. She meant what she said. "What do you say?"

"M-My wish is y-your command, Green Ranger," Finnster stuttered, following after her as she walked up the staircase, back to the moon's surface.

"I'm no Ranger anymore, Finnster. Call me Lady Rita!" She demanded.

"Of course, Lady Rita!" He called after her.


	2. The Palace

Finnster looked out at the stars that dotted the vast emptiness above. Their lights twinkled in his eyes and he relished his freedom. He and Rita, his former captor and now his empress, stood in the center of a crater on the dark side of the moon. Beneath them, deep inside of a chasm, lied a prison for people like them. Those who fought the Power Rangers for the Zeo Crystal. The furry white alien looked to Rita, the rogue Green Ranger, as she held her golden staff above her head.

The rock and dust swirled around their feet and began building, packing together around the edge of the crater and forming large walls. It rose higher and higher, and Finnster watched in awe as the rocky tower grew around them. Beyond his vision, more spires grew, forming a palace in the shadows. Finally, a staircase rose beneath their feet, lifting them up through the tower as floors formed. Finnster gazed in wonder as he watched Rita's palace form before his own eyes. Her magic was far greater than he had ever known from their first encounter.

At last, the rising staircase came to a halt. Rita stepped forward, coming to a balcony. With a wave of her wand, a vision appeared in the center of the chamber they were in. Similar in ways to the morphing grid in the Rangers' spaceship, it would allow her to see anything she desired. It would be used as her viewing globe, her method of spying on her mortal enemies as she plotted their demise.

"Isn't it grand?" Rita asked, looking out at the stars.

"Yes, Lady Rita, it certainly is," Finnster agreed with a nod of his head. He wrung his wrists nervously, wanting to ask a question but afraid to incur Rita's wrath. "M-may I ask, Lady Rita, if there is a room where I may practice my craft?"

"Of course, my dear Finnster. That's why I released you, after all. I want you to craft as many lovely little monsters as you can." A wicked smile crept across Rita's face as she thought of the havoc they would wreak together. "Your monsters and my putties... together? Angel Grove won't stand a chance!"

•••

Trini sat on a rock in the quarry, gazing at the cliffside where they had all met for the first time. She and the other Rangers. Her teammates. Her first real friends. It felt like such a long time ago, even though it had only been a month at the most since they found the coins. She remembered what it had felt like, waking up the next morning with the power welling up inside of her. She felt like she could do anything. Now, having beaten Rita, she wondered if that was true. She thought about what Rita had told them. That others would come, that their team's bond couldn't last. What she had told her, in the darkness of her bedroom the night before their battle. That she would always be an outsider. That she was just like Rita. Her gut twisted just thinking about it, recalling the feeling of Rita's nails scraping against her cheeks, cutting her skin. 

She shook the thoughts out of her head and refocused on her meditation. She had always fostered a passion for martial arts, as they helped her gain clarity. Losing herself in a kata, the repetition taking over and clearing her mind of all her pains and anxieties, at least for a time. Her training had helped her adapt quickest to Alpha's training in the pit, something Zack learned the hard way. On occasion she and Alpha would even work out new training regimens for the team, blending her own knowledge with the Eltarian Rangers'. It led to an effective style, something she was proud of. She wished that Zack would stop pestering her about capoeira, however. She didn't know the first thing about dance fighting. 

Her meditation was once again disturbed, but this time by something outside of her own head. Jason, carrying the sounds of rock and dirt scraping under his feet as he approached her. He waved silently and stood a few feet away, watching the cliffside with her as she attempted once more to focus. This time, however, she didn't get far before giving up. Trini stood, beat the dirt off of her jeans, and walked closer to Jason.

"'Sup, Boss."

"I thought I asked you not to call me that," he said with a sigh.

"Whatever you say, Boss."

Jason chuckled slightly. As annoying as the nickname was at times, it was growing on him a bit, and he had accepted that Trini wasn't going to stop using it. 

"Zack went home, but I think Kim is planning on staying out here tonight. You too?" Jason asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking off at the horizon. The sun was just beginning to dip beneath the clouds. 

"Yeah. Told my mom I was staying at Kim's tonight, but we're just gonna stay in the ship until tomorrow. What about you and Billy?" 

"Nah, we're gonna head back to his place in an hour. I'm spending the night there, then we're coming back in the morning. I already told Zack and Kim. We're doing another simulation once everyone shows up. Running a new program. Alpha and I hashed it out while everyone was in the rec room." Jason scratched at his neck and looked over to Trini. 

"Do we get new bad guys?"

"We get new bad guys."

"Cool."

Jason stepped closer to the glassy wall of the quarry and placed his hand on it. The power that it had given off before had vanished some time ago, but he carried a piece of that with him always. Trini watched from a distance, and she could feel it too. The Morphing Grid's power. It hummed in their bones and burned in their chests. It was like caged lightning, just waiting to burst out. All five Rangers loved that feeling. It grew stronger whenever they were together.

"Have you told anyone?" Jason asked, just loud enough for Trini to hear the words. "About what we did?"

"Told my family, but they didn't believe me. Why do you ask?" She responded, raising an eyebrow and approaching the cliffside. 

"I saved my dad from a burning car when Rita attacked with Goldar. My helmet was up, but... I dunno, we're probably fine." He pushed the thought out of his mind and looked over his shoulder at Trini. "Up for a little combat training before Billy and I head out?" He asked with a smirk. He knew Trini couldn't resist an opportunity to beat up her friends.

"Bring it," she said with a grin. 

Trini slid into an offensive stance while Jason took the defensive option, raising his arms in preparation for a strike. Trini lashed out with a kick, which Jason easily blocked with his forearm. He attempted to counter with a jab, only for Trini to duck beneath it and punch him in the gut. She cackled and backed away, giving him just enough time to recover before their sparring resumed.

Jason went for a jab, then a right hook, both of which Trini dodged, only for her to be caught off guard when he charged at her with his shoulder, ramming her and shoving her to the ground. He laughed and brought his fists back up as she stood. They stared each other down, neither wanting to make the first move in their third round.

Until Trini delivered a rapid combo of punches. Jason blocked, dodged and countered a few, but some slipped past his guard. He fought through the sting of her blows, but didn't catch onto her plan until it was too late. She hooked her leg around his ankle and pulled, forcing him to fall to the ground. Before he could recover, her boot slammed down on his chest and held him down. She crossed her arms and looked down at him.

"Thats two outta three, boss," she said triumphantly.

"I'm guessing you don't want to go for three out of five?" Jason groaned. Trini took her boot off of his chest and allowed him to sit up, then offered her hand and pulled him to his feet. 

"Nope." Trini looked up towards the top of the cliff and noticed Kim standing there, waiting for the two to finish beating each other up. "Alright, it's been fun, boss, but I gotta go."

Jason saluted her with two fingers and watched as she picked up her bag, while Kim dropped down and landed a few feet away. The girls walked off, striking up a conversation about what movies they'd be watching that night, while Jason turned back to the mountain. He leapt upwards and grabbed onto the rock, scaling the cliffside until he reached the top.

•••

Finnster looked about his new chambers with a glimmer in his eye. A supply of clay sat on his workbench, and he had more than enough to work with. Sheets of paper were scattered about, half finished sketches of monsters filling the pages. His long white fingers caressed a piece of clay in front of him, molding it into shape. He fashioned bones from the wet material, based on his recollection of Eltarian anatomy. Rita watched from the doorway, curiosity fueling her eavesdropping on the old sculptor. 

Content with the work she had seen, the witch turned on her heel and made her way to the balcony. Looking out at the black of space, a plan began forming in her mind. As the gears turned, a scowl crept across her face. By the end of the week, either Zordon would be nothing more than a memory, or her monster would be. She looked over her shoulder at the viewing globe and sighed. It showed her images of her old team, fighting off invasions from various alien empires and criminals. Six Rangers working as a team. That too was just a memory now. She glared at the image, and watched as it shifted, instead showing her the monster that would come from Finnster's laboratory within the next few days. The images of it destroying the Rangers' spaceship were enough to put her mind at ease for the time being.


	3. Night Off

Trini yawned and looked over at Kim. The Yellow and Pink Rangers were curled up on the couch in the rec room. They had just finished watching Final Destination and were halfway into the sequel. Their supply of chips and dip was dangerously low, Trini was getting cold, and Kim was hogging the comforter. It was clear that she needed to take action. 

Trini slid in closer to Kim, who pulled the comforter over her friend quietly. The ambient noises of the buried spaceship were putting the pair to sleep, and Kim was too tired to use any words. Instead she just smiled gently, and was silently grateful that she had this. The team. Her new friends. Trini. It made the sting of losing her old life hurt a bit less, and allowed her to forget what had happened on occasion. She could pretend that it had always been this way. 

Trini, for her part, was just happy to have friends at all. To have Kim here, knowing her secret and not minding in the least. Having no reservations about cuddling her beneath the covers when they were cold. Who she liked didn't change a thing. She buried her head in the comforter to avoid the chance of Kim seeing the look on her face, to avoid tearing up. She closed her eyes and sighed into the covers, just happy to have this. Being a Ranger was the best thing that had happened to them all, and they knew it. They knew they were better now that they all had each other in their lives.

Unfortunately for her, she chose to turn her head into the blanket at the exact moment one of the movie's characters was killed, and Kim assumed it was for a different reason than a desire for softness and warmth.

"I didn't think you were the sort of person who's afraid of horror movies," Kim noted, looking at Trini and giving her a gentle squeeze.

"I'm not," Trini said, her voice muffled by the covers. 

"You totally are." Kim smirked, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear and looking back to the movie.

Trini thought about arguing the point, but instead she peeked out from under the comforter and glared at the tv in an attempt to prove herself right. Actions speak louder than words, at least metaphorically. Even then, Kim kept acting as though she was terrified of the movie, holding her whenever a scary moment came up or even covering Trini's eyes when another character was killed off. Trini hated every second of the patronizing behavior, but all the while, a small part of her savored every time Kim touched her. She wished that she could just curl up and fall asleep in her friend's arms. Within the hour, that's exactly what happened.

•••

Zack looked at the chess board on his mother's lap. She had him backed into a corner, just like always. No harm in having a little fun at this point, he supposed. He was already going to lose, after all. So he moved his king into the perfect position to be killed by a pawn.

"(Checkmate,)" he said with a small smile. His mother just laughed and shook her head.

"(Once more, Zack. I want you to win this time.)" She began to reset the chess board, smiling at her son encouragingly.

That was never going to happen, he thought to himself.

•••

Jason eyed one of the toys on Billy's shelf. It was a stout, ugly blue monster, with large fangs. The exact kind of thing that Rita would send after them. 

"Still kinda hard to believe that we're superheroes, huh?" He asked aloud. 

"Well yeah, I guess. I love it though," Billy said with a smile. He was tinkering with something round and mechanical at his workbench. Jason hoped to God that it wasn't another lunchbox bomb. "Becoming a Ranger is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"Yeah. Me too," Jason agreed. He turned around and looked at his friend. "Definitely worth Saturday detention."

"Heh, yeah it is. Ooh, I almost forgot!" Billy dropped the device he was messing with and stood up, then began rifling around in a chest near his bed.

"What are you looking for, Billy?" Jason asked. "Did you make weapons for you and the others? Plans for new Zords? Did you find the Green Power Coin?"

"What? No, Jason, I bought the new Spider-Man movie and I _distinctly_ remember you saying you wanted to watch it." Billy looked at Jason in confusion. "Why'd you think those were the likeliest possibilities? I don't even understand how your sword works, so I can't make new weapons. And I'm not a blacksmith. I could look up blacksmithing online, but I dunno how good at it I'd be."

"So... Spider-Man."

"Yeah. Spider-Man."

"Works for me."

•••

Zordon's eyes, if he could still call them that, drifted throughout the spaceship. His face may have been contained within the command center, but his essence, his vision, his voice, they were one with the ship. He had accepted his fate the day that the new Rangers defeated Goldar. Seeing Billy's body laying on the floor of his ship, it reminded him of... it reminded him of his own failures as a leader. It caused him to realize that he wasn't an inherently better leader than Jason, that this team deserved a real chance, that his time was up. 

He looked into what the teenagers had begun calling their "rec room". In his own time, which still felt like just days ago, it was where he and his friends had slept. Trini and Kim were passed out on the couch they had hauled in. It was where his team had confessed their secrets and bared their souls to one another. So much had changed since then. He felt so old now. 

The pit was empty. He considered creating a few holograms to pass the time. He had taken to playing games with them as a way to entertain himself, as the nights could get very long, and very lonely. For a brief moment, six pale figures flickered in the pit, but they were gone as quick as they came. He couldn't look at their faces. Not yet. It was still far too painful for his heart to bear.

Alpha 5 was offline in his chambers, deep within the ship. Zordon was eternally grateful that he, at least, was still there after all this time. One friend had survived. Two, he reminded himself. He could no longer call her a friend, but once upon a time... 

All of the Zords, save for one, were tucked away in their hiding spot, resting on the rock. He gazed upon the tyrannosaurus with fondness. He had only used it once before his death, and it was more Jason's Zord than his own, but there was still something nostalgic about it. He had watched the team's battle through the viewing globe, and the sight of their united Zord... he still couldn't believe that they had done it. His own team hadn't managed to fuse their Zords until years had gone by. That Jason's team could do such a thing after less than two weeks, it was nothing short of a miracle. 

There were other halls and chambers, labs and decks. All were empty, save for the memories. Armored warriors walked the halls, laughing amongst themselves and relishing another victory. They were so much younger then. So naive. He wished it could have lasted just a few more days. If only Rita hadn't... if only.

Zordon still had many regrets, many hopes, and many, many long nights to come. 

•••

Rita walked to the shoreline, allowing the water to wash over her armored feet. She had teleported back to Earth only a few minutes before. She had felt it calling to her, and even now, beneath the moon's silver light, that feeling stayed with her. It grew stronger with each passing moment, and she didn't understand why. With a sigh, she allowed her armor to retract, just enough that she could feel the water brush against her ankles. Her toes dug into the sand and she took a deep breath of the cool fall air. She watched silently as the water rippled and the sounds of the night swirled around her. The Earth was so peaceful. The Green Power Coin glowed and hummed, and she felt it calling out harder. Something was wrong.

"Don't leave me," she whispered. The humming coin settled down a bit, but she could still feel it. It was as clear as the water washing over her feet, but for one more night she would ignore it. Pretend it wasn't happening. Pretend that it didn't hurt to wear her armor. Instead she would look to the sky and attempt to find some peace, just for one night.

The moon's silver glow reminded her of the stories she had heard while growing up on Eltar. The Power Rangers were well known there. She always admired the Black Ranger's mystical abilities, and she remembered what he had told her one night after saving her from a collapsing building. That somewhere out there, among the stars, there were other Rangers. Gold and Silver, Violet and Orange, any color she could imagine. They were a legion of heroes, protecting the Zeo Crystals with their lives. 

How naive he was, Rita thought to herself. To think that the Zeo Crystals should be guarded. It was a source of power, one that she could use to conquer the universe. Planet after planet would fall under her might, and their people would worship her. They would follow her every command. They would never think of abandoning her ever again. 

A bolt of green light shot away from the shore and towards the small blue planet's moon. She had to resume her plans. She couldn't afford to take a night off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys are enjoying this so far! Please remember to give kudos & comment!


	4. New Threats

Jason sighed as he drove through the streets of Angel Grove. Looking around at the town, he wondered briefly why it was this town. Why, of all places, was some tiny little fishing hamlet the site of a battle that would determine the fate of the human race? Was there any reason at all? Did the people of Angel Grove realize just how important the land beneath their feet was? He couldn’t stand living in Angel Grove, yet now he was bound to the town for life, just because some mystical force had chosen him. Because it saw something in him.

Billy sat in the passenger seat, jotting down notes in a spiral notebook, next to a sketch of some bit of complex technology that Jason recognized from Billy’s workbench. He didn’t seem to pick up on Jason’s inner thoughts, but that wasn’t anything new. Jason glanced over at his friend’s notebook again and raised his eyebrow.

“What is that? A watch?” He asked, pointing at the drawing on the page.

“Hm? Oh, no. Well, kind of. It looks like a watch, but it’s actually a communicator. So Zordon and Alpha can talk to us whenever they want.” Billy smiled wide and brushed a few eraser shavings off of the page. “I’ve been studying the technology in the command center, and I’m starting to understand some of it.”

“You’re starting to understand… alien technology…” Jason looked at Billy, not with disbelief, but with a sense of awe and slight confusion. “In just over two weeks,” he added.

“Well, yeah, I do remember everything, remember? It makes understanding it a lot easier. I’m still not quite there yet though,” he admitted.

“Cool. Cool cool cool.” Jason kept his eyes on the road, still thrown by what Billy had told him. “Well we’re almost there. Running a new training simulation today, so be prepared.”

“Jason, I’m always prepared. Zack is the one who you should remind to be prepared,” Billy pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Jason said. “Let’s get to work.”

**********

“It feels weird, not having anything looming over us anymore,” Kim said, pulling on a new tank top. “You know?”

“If by weird you mean a lot less stressful and terrifying? One hundred percent,” Trini snarked, grabbing her flannel off of the back of the couch.

Trini glanced at Kim, and her breath hitched when she saw her friend’s back. Kim’s pink top must have been designed just for the purpose of making her weak, she thought. It flaunted Kimberly’s muscles in such a way that Trini couldn’t help but notice them. Either that, or the chill of the ship was getting to her. She liked to pretend that that was it.

“You know what I mean,” Kim said, turning to face Trini and snapping her to attention. “We were under so much pressure for our first week, and then now we’re just, I dunno, doing training scenarios and exploring the ship! All that pressure to save the world is gone, but we’re acting like it’s still right there on our doorstep. We’re never gonna see Rita again, and those aliens Zordon is so worried about? It’s been _65 million years_! They’re probably long dead, so why are we running these drills?”

Kim’s question was a valid one, and Trini knew that. They had all been thinking about it on some level over the past few days. For Trini, it had been gnawing at her ever since the moment they batted Rita into space. What now? The villain is defeated, the minions crumbled to dust, and the town rebuilt. So… what now?

“Because things aren’t the same anymore, Kimmy. Nothing is.”

Trini’s statement hit Kim deep in her bones. It was as true and valid as the question it answered. Rita’s reawakening had changed them all, and it had changed Angel Grove. Both on the surface and within, they were vastly different than they were before the invasion. The buildings had been rebuilt newer, brighter. The people were elated, and had a new sense of passion for life after coming so close to losing everything. The Rangers were friends. More than friends. They had a bond between them that nobody else could comprehend, not without being Rangers themselves. Everything had changed.

“Nothing’s the same. So we gotta be ready.”

**********

Rita Repulsa curled her fingers around her power coin, caressing it lovingly. She slid a finger over the jade colored gem and felt it’s power crackling within like caged lightning. Her power, she thought. Her’s and nobody else’s. Constantly sparking, constantly surging. Electric and addictive and all her own.

“Finnster?” She asked, her tone playful and cloying, mocking almost. She leaned in the doorway to his workshop and admired her power coin, not even bothering to give her servant so much as a passing glance.

“Yes, Lady Rita?” He asked. His hands were wet with clay and aching from constant work. He hadn’t slept more than an hour since being awoken, and promised himself that he wouldn’t give himself any more rest until his work was done. Wiping the clay on his apron, he was relieved to be so close to the finishing line.

“My monster. My _beautiful creature_ … is he finished yet? I want to meet him,” she purred.

“One last detail, Lady Rita, and he shall be. I think you will be most impressed by his abilities! The Rangers won’t know what hit them, and while they’re distracted, you can take the Zeo Crystal. An excellent plan, if I do say so myself!”

Finnster scraped one last shred of clay from the form and flicked it onto the floor. He stepped to the side to give Rita a better view, and he relished in the smile she wore.

“Bring him to life, Finnster. Make my monster _real_.”

“Your wish, my command…”

With that said, Finnster began the ritual to bring the clay figure to life, to imbue it with magical power and a mind of it’s own. as clay turned to bone, it’s head lifted, and it’s eye sockets glowed a deep, unholy crimson. Rita crossed the room and whispered three words to the shifting monster as it grew and as color crept across it’s once grey body.

“Torture them, Bones.”

And thus, the skeletal creature had a life, a name, and a purpose.

**********

Jason and Billy walked through the ship's hallway. Jason's hands were jammed in his pant pockets, while Billy continued to make notes and scrawl down complex coding in his notebook. Jason stopped upon hearing a noise, closed his eyes, and waited for the inevitable.

Zack slammed into him, wooing loud enough to be heard throughout the entire ship, and wrapped his arms around Jason in a bear hug.

"Alright, we ready for this?!" Zack released Jason and circled around in front of his friends, a grin plastered across his face.

"Yes, Zack, we're ready for this," Jason said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. There was nothing that made him feel more like Zordon than dealing with a manic Black Ranger.

"Why is Zack shouting?" Kim's voice asked from out of the boys' sight. She and Trini stepped into view from around the corner at the end of the hallway. 

"When is Zack _not_ shouting?" Trini asked in turn. 

"She gets it!" Zack cheered, walking up to greet the girls. After that, he turned on his heel and faced Jason. "So, what are we doing, exactly? Alpha told me we're not fighting steampunk robots this time, and I don't think he's capable of lying."

"He can lie," Kim said. "This morning he tried telling Zordon that humans drink liquefied tree bark."

"Zordon almost believed him," Trini added with a snicker. 

"Okay but seriously, what are we doing?" Zack asked. "I wanna practice dance fighting."

"Please don't," Jason pleaded. "It's a new scenario that Alpha and I talked over yesterday. Up till now we've just been running the same scenarios that Zordon's team ran, but modified to be in Angel Grove. This one is brand new, and has no involvement from Zordon."

"So no dying at the end?" Kim asked.

"No dying at the end." Jason looked from Ranger to Ranger, and saw looks of relief on all of their faces. They understood, to an extent, why Zordon pushed them so hard. Why he tried to keep them under a death-fearing pressure. After what he had lost, it was more than understandable. But it wasn't what they needed. Not at the moment. When his eyes fell on Billy, a chill went down Jason's spine. They knew loss too. They knew what was at stake. But that was why they needed to do this. It wasn't carelessness, it wasn't some teenaged feeling of invincibility. That had been shattered at the shipyard, when Rita took Billy from them. No, it was because they needed to feel like they were capable of success. They needed a victory that they could relish in, like when they had destroyed Goldar and defeated Rita. Jason would give them that victory.

The five teenagers stepped into the hologram suite, and the door closed behind them. Zordon was silent, but they knew their mentor was watching. The room wasn't that different from the rest of the ship. Alien metal wove together to form complex patterns on the walls and ceiling, and dim lights shone between the interlacing metal. They grew brighter and brighter, and the floor beneath the rangers began to shift, pulling them away from one another. The teens shifted on their feet, preparing for the simulation to finish booting up. The walls would shimmer and change in appearance next, and then hard light structures would appear, creating the illusion of Angel Grove's streets, or the insides of a building, or...

Apparently nothing at all. The floor shuddered and stopped, and the lights shut off as quickly as they lit up. Billy looked to Jason, who shrugged to show his own confusion.

"Alpha? Zordon? What's going on?" Jason asked. No response came. "Zordon?!" Still, nothing.

And then a flash of emerald light struck down in the center of the room, scorching the metal floor. As the light faded, a being stood to meet them. Seven feet tall, with no skin or flesh to cover it's bones. It had nothing to even hold it's body together, yet it moved without issue. The creature's eye sockets held dull red lights, and in it's hands it held a pair of short swords. It looked from ranger to ranger, then let loose an unholy shriek, and lunged towards them.


	5. Insert Bone Joke Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm probably going to end up apologizing a lot for the gap between updates, aren't I? I'm trying to build up a small buffer to make up for that, but anyways, if you're still keeping up with this, I really do hope you enjoy this chapter! I'm a good chunk of the way into writing the next one, so you shouldn't have to wait another several months before this updates again. 
> 
> Also, thank you to my buddy Frick for beta reading this. You're awesome and I fuckin love you.

"Billy, look out!" Jason cried out as he dashed forward. Crimson light shimmered across his body, his armor forming just in time for him to raise an arm and block the skeletal creature's swords as they swung down at the Blue Ranger. 

A moment later, Trini's armored form tackled Bones, knocking it to the ground. She went to smash its skull with her fist, but it spun and rolled across the floor, separate from the rest of its body. Her fist collided with the metal floor, missing it's mark. 

Bones' body continued to fall apart, until it was scattered across the room, and then reassembled itself away from the Rangers. Kim helped Trini to her feet with an offered hand, and when she stood, all five Rangers had finished morphing.

"Uhh, what the hell is this thing?" Zack asked, utterly bewildered. 

"I'm guessing it's a monster!" Kim told him, rolling her eyes behind her helmet. "Anyone have any ideas on how to kill it?!"

Before anyone could come up with an answer, Bones let out an ear-splitting screech and raced towards Zack. The Black Ranger ducked and reached forward, aiming to suplex the skeleton, only for it to once again separate its body, this time reassembling behind him. With a single kick, it sent him flying into the far wall of the room. 

"Damnit, Zack..." Jason muttered. He summoned his sword and swiped at the monster, but it parried the blow with its own weapons. 

Bones forced him back, staring him down with hollow eyes. The small red glow they held began to burn brighter, and Jason knew that it was stronger than him. Luckily, Kim and Billy were there to deliver a pair of snap kicks, each hitting a different side of Bones' ribcage. 

Several ribs splintered upon impact. Bones was knocked back, but it wasn't long before it recovered. The bone splinters slid along the ground, raised themselves into the air, and fitted themselves back into place. It was as if it had never been damaged at all.

"That's cheating, dude!" Zack cried out as he stood back up. 

With a hiss, Bones’ skull spun around on its spinal column, and looked directly at the Black Ranger. Its upper body detached from its legs and flew in his direction, swinging its swords wildly. Meanwhile, the legs swept the Blue and Pink Rangers onto their backs, before sending Jason across the room with a swift kick to his solar plexus.

Before the monster could strike Zack down with its blades, a pair of golden daggers flew into the back of it's head. 

Bones paused, rattling for a moment before reaching back to yank the daggers out of the back of its skull. It dropped them on the ground, but when it turned to face its attacker, it stumbled and nearly collapsed. It let out one final, unsettling hiss. Emerald lights flashed from the corpse, blinding the Rangers for a moment. When their vision cleared, both halves of Bones had vanished.

"Did we win?" Billy groaned. As he recovered from being knocked down, he looked around, as did the others, until they saw Trini standing tall. She held a second pair of daggers in her hands, to everyone else's surprise.

"He got away," Trini grumbled as she demorphed, the weapons vanishing along with her armor. "But next time I see him, I'm gonna finish the job."

The others followed suit in shedding their armor, and Trini helped Zack to his feet, while Billy and Kim did the same for Jason. Once they had all recovered from the sudden and unexpected fight, attention quickly turned to Trini's stunt.

"You've got weapons?" Billy asked. "How do we do that? I wanna do that."

Trini shrugged in response. From the look on her face, she was just as confused as the rest of the team. "I didn't know I could. I just saw that thing about to kill you guys, and... Boom. There they were. It was like instinct."

She looked to Jason, hoping for some kind of an answer. He rubbed his chin in thought for a moment, before dispensing a pearl of wisdom.

"No fucking clue," he admitted.

"What about your sword, dude?" Zack asked. "I figured that was a leader only thing, but if Trini can pull weapons out of her ass-"

"I didn't pull them out of my ass."

"-Then we should be able to do that too, yeah?" he finished. "So how do you do it?"

"The sword was just in the command center," Jason told them. "When we morphed for the first time, Zordon told me to take it with me. It just sort of merged with my armor after that. I can summon it at will, but I don't really know how to describe it. I can also get rid of it. I've been keeping it in the command center whenever we aren't training. But after this," he said, gesturing in the direction of Bones' exit. "I'm gonna be keeping it with me."

"We should ask Zordon about the weapons," Kim said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "He really needs to tell us more about what we're doing. These weapons, that monster, or alien, or _whatever the hell_ it is... We need to be more informed."

"Kim's right," Trini agreed, sharing a look with the Pink Ranger. "If we're gonna keep doing this, we need to know what we're doing. Not just whatever Zordon _thinks_ we should know."

"We will. After we finish practice," Jason told them. He ignored the stares of frustration and, in Zack's case, mimed stabbing, and set about reactivating the room's hologram systems. He had promised them a training scenario where they got to win. That was the deal.

********************

Zordon hid himself within the fallen space ship's systems as soon as he felt the presence of an invader. Nobody but a Ranger should have been able to enter the ship, and yet... And yet someone had. He accepted it, as bitter as it was, because he knew that denying it would lead to that weakness being exploited. 

The real question was _how_ it had circumvented their defenses. But while he retreated into the ship, into himself, rather, Zordon put his faith in the Rangers to handle the threat themselves.

The ship had been designed to tap into the morphing grid in a way that only the coins, and those who had bonded to them, could access it’s technology. Alpha as well. In all his time as a Ranger, only one enemy was able to enter the ship, and that enemy... She was once an ally. If this intruder had taken Rita's power coin from her body out in space, that could explain it.

There were more options, of course. Rumors of other coins had existed for as long as the six Power Rangers themselves had. White or Gold or Silver, or any other color that could be named. Never any proof to back those rumors, but it was an option he needed to consider. 

By the time the Rangers entered the command center, ragged from both the fight and the training session, Zordon still hadn't found an answer. But he heard their voices calling to him, and so he returned, the impression of his face bursting forth from the command center's wall to meet his pupils. 

Zordon searched for something to tell them, his racing mind slowed to a halt. They weren't angry, or scared, or resentful, as they so often were. He saw what he’d seen the day that they came back to him, victorious over Rita's forces. Relief. Confidence. Maturity. He saw it in their faces and the way that they carried themselves, and it calmed him.

"You're okay," he said, pride welling up in his voice. "Good... Good. The intruder, did you-"

"Get our asses handed to us?" Zack asked.

"We didn't get our asses handed to us," Kim told Zordon, shooting Zack a glare. 

"We kind of did," he said. 

"You're all children..." Trini muttered.

"Enough, okay!" Jason shouted, quieting the bickering Rangers. "We didn't lose, but we didn't win. Stalemate, okay? It was a stalemate. Some kind of monster, or... Or alien, I don't know. It was made of bones."

"It kept falling apart, and then putting itself back together," Billy added. "The only thing that really hurt it was Trini's daggers. Oh! Trini, tell Zordon about your daggers!" Billy encouraged her, clapping his hands excitedly.

"Daggers?" Zordon asked. Right away, he recalled what they must have been talking about. A sharp pain went through his metaphorical heart as he remembered a vision of a woman, a friend, reaching out to him and pressing a golden coin into his hands as he crawled through mud and ash. "You summoned her daggers?"

Trini nodded, though her expression was one of confusion. 

"We were fighting that skeleton, and I saw that he was about to kill Zack, so I just... I dunno, I reacted on instinct. All of a sudden, the daggers were in my hands, and I was throwing them at it."

"But you didn't kill it?" Zordon asked.

"No, it got away before I could finish it off," Trini told him with a huff. She knew that she was _going_ to finish the job, though, even if she didn't say it. The rest of the team knew it too. 

"I see... In that case, you all will have to keep an eye out for this creature," Zordon told them, to which they all nodded. "Ah, I need to know something first. Did any of you see how it entered?"

"It teleported in," Billy said. "With this big, bright, green flash of light. Really bright. Kind of blinding."

"Did it have a power coin?"

"No?" Kim responded. "Why?"

"Only someone who possesses a power coin may enter this ship," Zordon explained. "But if this _skeleton_ didn't have one, I'm afraid I don't know how it could have gotten past our defenses.” He paused for a moment and watched their faces as they reacted. If they were frustrated by his lack of a solution, they didn’t say it. “I'll need time to find an answer. All of you... I'm proud of you. You may not have defeated this enemy, but I can't say that my Ranger team solved all of our problems at the first encounter either. You're doing well. Especially for your age and lack of experience. Better than could be expected."

"...Thanks, Zordon," Jason said. He spoke for all of them. As much of a hardass as Zordon had been, and still could be, making him proud was like making a father proud. It was something that touched all of them, doubly so, considering how rarely their mentor opened up like that. "Everyone, you can head home if you want," he told the others. "Keep an eye out for the skeleton."

"Wait, aren't we gonna ask him about the weapons?" Billy asked as he, Kimberly, and Zack made their way to the door. 

"I've got it, Billy," Trini said. Jason clapped her on the shoulder before joining the others. When the doors to the command center closed, she was left alone with Zordon. She looked up at his stoic visage and asked the first of many questions.

"What did you mean when you said that I summoned _her_ daggers? Zordon, who is she?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don't forget to kudos and leave a comment! I thrive on feedback lol.


	6. Timeless Wonders, Fire & Thunder

"What did you mean when you said that I summoned _her_ daggers?" Trini asked, looking up at her mentor. "Zordon, who is she?"

Zordon looked down at Trini and struggled to find the words he needed to answer her question. He went out of his way to avoid talking about his Ranger team to the teenagers. When they first got their powers, he did nothing _but_ compare them to his team, even though it wore down on them, made them feel like they could never measure up to their predecessors. Besides, just thinking about his fallen friends was painful enough.

"Look, if you're not gonna tell me about the other Rangers..." Trini said, looking to the door. 

"Don't go," Zordon said quietly. "I will... I will explain. The daggers you wield, they _did_ belong to a dear friend of mine. More than that, they were passed down from Yellow Ranger to Yellow Ranger throughout the generations, farther back than I could possibly recall."

"But who was she?" Trini pressed, taking a step towards Zordon. "Who was the Yellow Ranger before me?"

Zordon paused as memories came flooding back to him. Memories of his own youth, of his dearest friends, of the day that he became a Ranger, all the way up to the day that he watched his friends die. The day that he died alongside them.

"Her name was Delphine..."

********************

**Eltar. Over 65 million years ago.**

He came from a clan of soldiers. His father, his mother, his brothers and sisters, _all_ of them fought in defense of their world. But Zordon, the youngest of them all, wanted something more. He felt that destiny was pulling him towards the path that his family walked, but his heart yearned for something vastly different.

He found a kindred spirit in Delphine. Born to a family of laborers, immigrants from another planet, she too wanted to be known for something greater than her roots. She set out for the city of Corinth on the day that she reached the age of majority. 

Standing alone on a train platform, her attention was captured by a young man approaching the station. Zordon sat on a bench behind her as they waited for the train to arrive. It’d be a long trip to Corinth, and both carried bags that had been packed for such a long journey. 

Their eyes met and neither looked away. Delphine found herself studying the tattoos that wrapped across his body, over half of his face, and along his arms and legs. Long, winding patterns of raised, chalk-colored skin. She hadn’t met many Eltarians who still practiced scarification, and the sight of those tattoos sent a shiver down her spine. 

Zordon was similarly intrigued by what he saw. She wasn’t Eltarian. Possibly Aquitian, he thought, though he had never seen one before and couldn’t be certain. He just knew that after losing their world to Lord Zedd, the surviving Aquitians fled to Eltar. He doubted it would be kind to ask about the subject.

They couldn’t dwell on their thoughts about one another for very long, however. The train arrived, screeching to a halt along the silver tracks, and they boarded. Seeing that there were no empty sleeper cabins, save for one. 

“We’ll have to share, then,” Delphine mused, glancing once again at Zordon’s scars.

Zordon nodded, then tossed his bag onto the lower bunk and sat beside it. Delphine sat cross legged on the floor across from him and peered out the window as the train took off again. 

“What is your name?” he asked.

********************

"What are you running away from, Zordon?" Delphine asked. Zordon could hardly see her under the cover of night, but her voice told him she was there with him in the dark cabin, still laying on the floor. 

"What am I not running away from?" he snorted in contempt. "Family. Fate. Becoming something I know I'm not."

"Care to elaborate?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. She didn't much care for cryptic statements.

"I come from a family of soldiers. They want me to be like them. But all I want, all I've ever wanted, is to learn. That's why I'm going to Corinth. To learn the ancient Eltarian mystic arts. And what about you, Delphine? What brings you down this path?"

"Same thing, I suppose. My family never had much. I watched my fathers break their backs, slaving away and suffering in order to build the oh-so-great structures that tower above us. I told myself that I would never allow myself to die like that, all broken down and weak from struggle. Magic will be my escape."

They caught the glint of each other's eyes through the darkness, and they felt their hearts break for one another. Delphine took Zordon's hand in her own, and she made him a promise.

"Zordon, my friend, destiny will never chain us."

********************

Trini sat down on the steps of the command center and held her jacket in her lap. Alpha had joined them not long into the story, and he sat beside her, listening intently and obviously trying to mask the emotions that were being stirred up. But Trini didn't know what to think. Not yet. 

"So how did you become the Power Rangers?" she asked.

"The coins had to be passed on. Once the Morphing Grid chooses new Rangers, the current team would begin to feel the coins pulling away from them," Zordon explained. "We were chosen a few years after we arrived in Corinth. When we were students, learning of Eltar's ancient mystic arts."

"So you're a wizard," Trini noted.

"No. I am no wizard..."

********************

Corinth was everything they imagined, if not more. They were students, yes, but they were happy to learn. Magic was knowledge, as much as technology was. Many times, it felt as though it was them against the world, and other times it was as though the world was far too expansive for them to possibly comprehend. They didn't think about soldiers or manual labor or lost homeworlds. They were far, far beyond that.

The only thing they could break their attention away from their new lives was their true destiny, although they didn't yet know it. Everyone on Eltar held some measure of fascination for the Power Rangers. The six of them were heroes of the highest caliber. They were _revered_. 

Zordon and Delphine didn't know that they'd been chosen until the coins were in their hands.

"You, what's your name," an old, hoarse voice called out to Delphine. When the young Eltarian looked to see who was speaking to her, she saw a cloaked old man who had been weathered by time. His hair was long, as was his beard, and deep in his gentle blue eyes, he looked as though he had seen things no man could describe. And he was pointing a finger straight at Delphine.

She gave him her name, and he smiled at her. Like a kind grandfather who hadn't seen his family in years, only for them to come home for the holidays. His eyes crinkled and he laughed jovially.

"It's your lucky day, my dear Delphine," he told her. He brought his extended hand back and reached into his cloak, then handed her a palm-sized golden coin with a yellow crystal set in the middle. When she received the power coin, the instant that it touched her pale skin, Delphine's eyes went wide with shock. 

"You are-"

"I am an old man, Delphine. An old man whose time has passed. It is _your time_ now. Live well, Yellow Ranger." 

And with those words, he slipped back into the crowd, and left her to ponder what her future would hold.

********************

Zordon had been studying a tome on the tram ride to his housing complex when a woman sat beside him. She looked straight ahead, out the window across from them, and seemed to hardly notice that there even was a young man sitting beside her. He glanced up and saw her smiling serenely as she watched the city go by. 

“You’re a scholar? I’m surprised. I always thought you’d grow up to be a soldier, like your family,” she said, speaking with a familiarity that didn’t exist in Zordon’s mind.

“How do you know who I am?” he asked, tense.

“I knew your parents, before you were born. Last time I saw you, you were still in your infancy,” she revealed, finally turning to look at Zordon. “I was surprised when I realized that it was you who the coin was calling out to.”

Zordon looked at her, confusion etched across his tattooed face. Clearly the woman was just insane, he thought. She had to be. But then she turned over her hand, and he saw the coin she held. A red crystal was in the center of the small golden disk, and it began to glow softly as he instinctively reached for it. When he stopped himself, the woman met him halfway and handed the coin off to him.

“I know you weren’t planning on being a soldier, but the Grid has bigger plans for you. It will be challenging, but you would not have been chosen if you didn’t have what it took to be the next leader of the Power Rangers.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and offered a reassuring smile. “From one Red Ranger to the next… Lead your team well, Zordon.”

Before he could ask her anything, demand any answers as to what was happening, the tram stopped and she departed, leaving him sitting there alone. He turned the coin in his hand and rubbed the red jewel with his thumb. It hummed, and he could feel the power within it. The power within _himself_.

********************

“ _That_ was how we became Rangers,” Zordon said to Trini, smiling slightly. She hadn’t seen him smile often, maybe just once, before that moment. It was like he was an entirely different person, far less harsh than the frustrated mentor she knew. 

“How long were you Rangers?” She asked. “And who were those people? The Rangers before you guys?”

“I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how long we were a team. Ages, it felt like. Yet it all passed by so quickly. I never learned who Delphine’s predecessor was, but my own… She was as she claimed. An old friend of my parents’, who fought beside them as a soldier before she was chosen to become the Red Ranger.”

Zordon went quiet for a bit, and Trini simply stood with him in silence. She wished that she and the others had gotten at least as much as Zordon had, the opportunity to meet the Rangers who came before them. Instead they claimed their powers by smashing rocks. Not even knowing what they were getting into. Jason was the only one who would ever get to meet the Ranger who held his coin before him. 

“What about Rita?” Trini asked, her voice wavered slightly as she looked at the metal floor. The question, unlike her others, wasn’t asked as surely. Memories of the night Rita attacked her flooded her head every time she thought about the woman. Memories of what she did to Billy. But she hoped that knowing more would help suppress her fear of the witch.

“Another time, Trini,” Zordon said shortly. All traces of his earlier reverie vanished, and his face turned sour. “Go, spend some time with your friends. You have listened to an old man’s stories long enough.”

“Right…” Trini sighed and picked up her coat. She made her way to the door, but before she left, she turned back to face him briefly. “Thanks, Zordon. See you tomorrow.”

“Farewell, Trini.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to leave a comment! 
> 
> Next chapter: Something big happens!


	7. Tommy Oliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying this so far! I've been pretty busy with my new job, but I think it actually might be helping to motivate me more with this fic? I've been spending my free time more carefully, which means sitting myself down to work on this whenever I get the chance. And from here on out, the plot of this fic is probably going to become a bit more clear ;)

Trini stared into her locker, but she wasn’t really staring at anything. Jason walked by and said something about practice. Billy and Zack trailed after him, catching up in time for Zack to wrap an arm around Jason and nearly bowl him over. She hadn’t seen Kim since lunch. But Trini’s thoughts, for once, weren’t about the Pink Ranger and the feelings that she stirred. 

She kept thinking about what Zordon had told her, about the Yellow Ranger who came before her. The Yellow Ranger that Rita had boasted about murdering, that night in Trini’s bedroom. Her hand at Trini’s throat. She had put the fear of god into Trini, and even weeks later she found herself waking up in a cold-sweated panic because of it. 

“Hey.”

She reminded herself that she had overcome that fear, and that she’d do it as many times as she had to. Even if she died, like Delphine had died. Even if she ended up trapped in that wall with nobody left, like Zordon. But her resolve didn’t cancel out the fear. It just covered it up, like a child wrapped up in a blanket so the monsters couldn’t touch her. Even the knowledge that Rita was dead, burnt up in the atmosphere, did nothing to bury her fear of the Green Ranger.

“Hey.”

She knew that she could rely on them, though. Her team. They’d die for each other. Hell, Billy already had, and it was that bond between them that brought him back. All four of them would watch over her, protect her as she protected them. That’s what family did. And that was far more comforting a thought than what Rita did to Delphine.

“Hey!”

“Huh?” Trini whipped her head around and saw the source of the voice that was calling her. 

It was a girl she had seen a few times around the school, though she actually found the jacket she wore to be more familiar. Bright green, with a white dragon stenciled across it. But the girl wearing it wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. She was tall, with beautiful brown skin and dark hair tied in a pair of braids that hung over her shoulders. Deep brown eyes, and an annoyed look on her face, although that faded once Trini actually paid attention to her.

“You’re the other new kid, right? Trini?” The girl asked, in a low, husky voice. 

“Um, yeah. You’re... _Tommy_ , right? I recognize the jacket from detention.”

“Yep. Tommy Oliver. Just moved to Angel Grove this summer, and let’s just say I haven’t exactly managed to make any friends yet. But then I said to myself “Hey Tommy, there goes that other new girl. She looks standoffish and cute, you should see if she wants to hang out sometime”. So…”

“Hard to see why you don’t have any friends,” Trini snarked instinctively. To her credit, she regretted it right after the words left her mouth.

“If you don’t want to, you could just say no,” Tommy huffed. She turned to walk away, but Trini reached out and stopped her.

“Sorry. You know what? Sure. Why not.”

“You mean it?” Tommy asked, a bit apprehensive after Trini’s put down. But Trini nodded, and forced a smile. “Hah, alright. Cool. Wanna head to Krispy Kreme maybe?”

“Sure. Might have to ditch you eventually though. I’ve got tai chi practice later today,” Trini told her. It wasn’t entirely a lie. There _was_ practice, and she _did_ know tai chi. It’s just that she’d be practicing those skills on holograms of rock monsters.

“Awesome,” Tommy said with a relieved grin. She pulled her messenger bag back up her shoulder a bit and looked past Trini, in the direction they’d need to go to leave the school. “Anywhere you gotta go first, or do you wanna head out now?”

“No, I’m all set,” Trini said. She grabbed her own bag and set off towards the school’s exit, with Tommy grinning beside her. 

Krispy Kreme, along with the rest of Angel Grove’s recently demolished buildings, had been rebuilt in hardly any time at all. In fact, it looked nicer than it had before, and seemed to be far busier than when she and Kim had goofed around there in the past. The place was _packed_. Mostly teenagers and young adults, some of whom were, of course, wearing shirts with a rainbow lightning bolt symbol on the chest. She had seen the same shirts at school, ever since the battle with Rita and Goldar. 

“Since when is this place a Power Rangers fanclub?” Trini muttered to herself.

“Ever since that witch lady showed up,” Tommy said, taking the question seriously. “Apparently some people saw her eating donuts here or something. Still hard to believe all that shit really happened.”

“Did you see them?” Trini asked. She didn’t know why, but she was curious. A part of her enjoyed all the attention that their alter egos had garnered in the wake of their debut. Even when nobody outside the team, save for Tommy apparently, paid Trini any mind, they were obsessed with the Yellow Ranger. She had even seen a store selling plushies of her heroic self.

“Only a glimpse, but yeah, I did.” Tommy grinned as she recalled the experience. She sat down at the only empty table in the building, and Trini sat across from her. “I was out grabbing breakfast with my foster parents when it all went down. One of those rock monsters attacked us, but the Yellow Ranger crushed them with her robot. I managed to take a few pictures of her, during the cleanup. Wanna see them?”

Trini couldn’t help but agree to take a look. Tommy had actually gotten some good photos, it turned out. A few blurry shots of the Sabertooth Tiger Zord in action, but also one of it standing still, after the Megazord had disassembled. She also had several pictures of the Yellow Ranger clearing rubble, reuniting a child with his mother, and posing for pictures with the Blue Ranger and a little girl that Billy had saved. 

Tommy caught Trini smiling as she swiped from picture to picture on Tommy’s phone. She was cute when she smiled, Tommy realized. Her own cheeks flushed as she watched Trini. She was beyond happy that Trini had agreed to come with her, to get to know her. She felt as though, had she tried at the start of school year, Trini would have bolted rather than agree to spend time with another human being. But something had changed recently. A little while before the monster attack, Trini had become more open at school, and Tommy had noticed. Hard not to, when the girl she had a crush on started spending time with the school’s former queen bee and the disgraced quarterback. 

“What about you?” Tommy asked as Trini handed the phone back. “Where were you when it all happened?”

“Hiding out with some friends at Kimberly Hart’s house,” Trini lied. They had gone over their cover story at the command center, after they returned from the battle. Just in case parents or police started asking questions. “We were watching the whole thing on the news.”

“How’d you get to be friends with her, anyways? Kinda surprised that you’d end up friends with someone like her.” Tommy sipped at her drink. Her expression had turned sour the instant that Kim’s name was mentioned.

“We just kind of hit it off in detention. That’s how I started hanging out with all of them,” Trini said. Another lie, although a bit closer to the truth. 

“Hm. How’d you end up in detention?” Tommy asked, still seeming a bit put off by the mere existence of Kimberly in Trini’s life.

“Got into a fight with Zack Taylor.” That much, at least, was true. Trini smirked when she fessed up to it. She and Zack had planned the fight out in advance, as a way of joining the rest of their team in Saturday detention. She dented a locker with his body, right in front of the principal. “That’s before I _somehow_ became his friend. What about you?”

“Kicked a bully’s ass,” Tommy confessed. She cracked her knuckles, which were only just recently fully healed from said fight. “He was making fun of some autistic kid behind his back, so I decked him in the middle of lunch. And I kinda didn’t stop hitting him until security got involved.”

Trini snorted in amusement. “Billy told me about that fight. Didn’t know you were involved. Can’t say I blame you for it, though. I probably would have punched the guy too.”

The two fell silent for a moment, but not an awkward one. It was more comfortable, really. The sounds of people chatting filled the air, and they dug into their donuts while smiling at the other. Trini had long forgotten what it was like to just have a _normal_ friend. Tommy, for her part, had never really had one, even before she came to Angel Grove. 

They spent nearly an hour longer there, talking about school, and what it was like to be the new kids, and the new status quo in Angel Grove, what with the superheroes and all. The time passed by so quickly. Before long, they were interrupted by Trini’s phone buzzing. Kim had texted her, asking where she was, and if she was alright.

“Shit. Hey, um, I’m late for tai chi practice. I have to go,” she said, while scrambling to gather her things and toss away her trash.

“Oh. Right, right,” Tommy said, looking a bit crestfallen. “I’ll head home, then. It was nice getting to hang out with you, though.”

“Same here,” Trini said. She really did wish she could stick around just a bit longer, but she didn’t want to leave the team hanging either. “Hey, you know what? My friends and I were gonna hang out this coming weekend, after detention. If you want, I can see if they’d be alright with you coming with us.”

“Really? That’d be awesome, yeah! Sure! I’ll make sure to actually stick around for detention, then,” Tommy said, giddy. She waved goodbye to Trini as they left the shop and went their separate ways. 

She couldn’t wait for the weekend to arrive.

********************

“There she is!” Kim’s head perked up the moment that she spotted Trini off in the distance. Kim, Jason, Zack, and Billy were waiting at the gorge, and Jason was growing impatient. Zack and Billy were just playing Pokemon Go. 

“Finally,” Jason grumbled. 

“Hey Trini!” Zack waved her over as she neared them.

“Hey,” Trini said. She looked past them, to the steep drop that would bring them to the command center. 

“Where were you?” Kim asked as the five Rangers converged. She looked concerned, more so than the others, and she touched Trini’s shoulder.

“I was hanging out with someone from school. Just lost track of time is all. But whatever, I’m here now. We good?”

“Yeah, let’s just get going,” Jason said. His surly attitude was fading fast, and it was clear that he was just annoyed at being forced to wait. But when Trini started to walk towards the cliff, Jason reached out and stopped her. “What are you doing?”

“Going to the command center,” she said slowly, looking at each of her teammates in confusion. Apparently she had missed something.

“Billy and I talked to Zordon and Alpha this morning, before school. We’re not training today,” Jason explained, his annoyance building itself back up. “I told you, back at the school. We’re tracking down Bones tonight.”

Trini said nothing. Instead, she just nodded. 

“Look, it’s fine,” Kim cut in, coming to Trini’s defense. “She’s here now, we’re here too. Let’s just get going, okay?”

Jason scratched at his chin, then nodded. Billy started to root through his backpack for something, and Jason joined him in fussing over whatever it was. Zack and Kim stayed by Trini.

“What’s going on? You alright?” Kim asked.

“I’m fine. Seriously. I was just hanging out with Tommy Oliver and lost track of time,” Trini said. Kim wasn’t sure that was all, but Zack saw right through her.

“You’re not fine,” he said, his voice low enough so as not to be overheard by Jason and Billy. “You don’t have to tell us, but you should. Whatever it is, you can trust us, Trini.”

“Zack’s right. We’re here for you,” Kim told her with a gentle smile. 

Trini looked at Kim, and with a sigh, she decided that they were right. She had already trusted them with her deepest secret, what was one more?

“I’ve been having nightmares. About Rita.”

“Shit,” Zack muttered. “Anything we can do to help?”

“I don’t know. Right now, I just want to focus on getting rid of this monster before it hurts anyone,” Trini said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. 

“Okay, but just… Talk to us, okay? We’ll do what we can to help,” Kim told her. She hugged Trini, and Trini hugged her back awkwardly, while Zack looked at her with concern. 

When they pulled out of the hug, Trini and Kim held each other’s gazes for a moment, before looking away, both fighting to suppress a growing blush. Zack bowed out and walked over to join Jason and Billy, while Kim talked with Trini a bit more. Zack pulled out his phone and shot a quick text to Kim.

**We’re keeping an eye on her, right? We can take shifts or whatever, but we need to keep her company.**

He slipped his phone back into his pocket, and looked up to see Jason and Billy looking at a piece of handheld tech that hardly looked like it had come from Earth.

“Whoa. What is _that_?” Zack asked, reaching out to poke it, only for Billy to slap his finger away.

“It’s a scanner. I found it back when we were fixing up the ship, and Alpha thought it would help us find that skeleton monster,” Billy explained as he fiddled with the thing. “I _think_ it still works…”

The machine bleeped, and the three boys jumped in surprise, then broke out into smiles. 

“Alright, gang,” Jason said with a small grin. “Let’s find us a monster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... How about that Tommy Oliver kid, huh? 
> 
> Don't forget to comment and kudos! Feedback always helps!


	8. Into The Woods

The light in Bones’ eyes was dimmer than when she had last seen him. It was just the two of them, alone in the woods by Angel Grove. The magic that knitted him together had begun to leave his body, and in just a few more hours it would be gone entirely. Quicker than that, if he kept exerting himself. She had forgotten that Finnster’s monsters degraded over time. That would have to be remedied in the future.

Rita touched her golden staff to his sternum and filled his bones with her magic. Green energy surged into his core and spread from that point, until it was crackling between his fingers and toes, and the light in his eyes was restored.

“This time, you are NOT to come back,” Rita demanded. “You will _find_ them. You will _tear_ them _apart_. You will _collect_ their Power Coins, and only _then_ will you be allowed to return to your Mistress. Get it? Got it? GOOD. Now leave my sight.”

She waved Bones off, and he lumbered into the woods in search of the Power Coins, while Rita came face to face with a rather surprising visitor. It was a young girl wearing green, around the same age as Rita’s sworn enemies, but without any of their power. The girl was frozen in place by shock and fear. Rita contemplated killing her. It would remove any and all witnesses of her presence on Earth, and besides that, it could be fun. She hadn’t taken a life in a few weeks. However, it could also draw more attention to her.

Before she could decide what to do with the girl, Rita felt a sudden drop in her stomach, and she lurched forward without meaning to. The witch collapsed onto the ground and fought back a rising bile in her throat as her stomach churned painfully. Her armor began to retract. On top of it all, her power coin was screaming at her, demanding to be passed on to its next master.

“Not _now_ ,” she seethed, fighting back against the pain with all of her strength. She punched the ground, kicking up dirt from the impact. Her grip around her staff tightened, and she forced herself up onto her feet.

By the time that Rita had regained control, Tommy was gone, running as fast as she could off in the distance. She wasn’t so far away that Rita couldn’t kill her, but she wasn’t sure that her coin would allow it. As she prepared to teleport back to the moon, plans began to form in Rita’s head. She had an idea...

********************

Tommy tore through the woods as fast as she could, in the opposite direction of the monster and its mistress. She had just wanted to go for a walk to clear her head after her discussion with Trini, that was all. But no, she had to bear witness to the fact that the crazy moon witch was still alive, and was about to attack the town _again_. Who was she even supposed to warn? It wasn’t like the Power Rangers had given away a number for a hotline, there was no “power signal”, no _nothing_.  
And even that hinged on the slim possibility of her surviving being chased through the woods by the big bad. Tommy risked a glance over her shoulder, and while she didn’t see anyone chasing after her, that wasn’t proof of anything. Better safe than sorry. Always better safe than sorry. She pushed on, through the trees and the brush. She ignored the stitch in her side and her tiring legs, until she broke through into a small clearing, where she saw that she wasn’t alone. 

Five alien, armored figures stood before her. Red, blue, yellow, pink, and black. Two of them carried bladed weapons, and a third held a strange device in their hands. The device pinged, then fell silent, only to ping again a second or two later. The five Rangers stared at her in silence, as if to decide what they would do with her. 

If there was a god, Tommy would have to thank her someday. 

“Monster!” she blurted out, pointing in the direction she had come from. “There’s this-this freaky skeleton monster! That way!”

“Are you alright?” the Pink Ranger asked in a soft voice. She approached Tommy and clasped her hands on the panicking girl’s shoulders, as if to say “I won’t let anyone hurt you”.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine. Um, thanks,” Tommy stammered. She glanced over her shoulder again, and then once more, just to be sure. The other four Rangers moved around her, to stand between Tommy and the path that she had followed to get to them. 

“Was it chasing you?” the Pink Ranger asked. 

“No, no. It was sent off in the opposite direction,” Tommy explained. Her nerves began to settle down, and she sorted through her memories to try and give the heroes a proper explanation of what she had seen. “That witch lady told it to go one way, I ran the other way, but I wasn’t sure if _she_ was coming after me.”

The Rangers exchanged looks, and the pit in Tommy’s stomach grew deeper. She couldn’t tell what they were thinking beneath those helmets, but she doubted it was anything good. The Black and Yellow Rangers began muttering about “Rita” until the Red Ranger spoke up.

“What do you mean by witch? Was it the woman who attacked Angel Grove?” he asked, clenching his fist at his side.

Tommy nodded her head, and the Yellow Ranger bolted in Rita’s direction.

“Shit!” Pink said under her breath. She took off after her teammate, and the others quickly followed, with only Black lagging behind.

“Go back to town, okay new girl?” he said, before chasing after his team.

And just like that, Tommy Oliver was left in the clearing, alone with her thoughts. Wondering what exactly the Black Ranger meant when he called her “new girl”. As that question tugged at her, Tommy began to feel an impulse, deep in her bones, which told her to follow the Rangers. Her mind was telling her to go home, to let the heroes do their thing, and to pray that the witch would leave her be. Another voice, a smaller, far more determined voice, cut through that noise. It told her to follow them. To witness what was going to happen. 

She listened to the smaller voice.

********************

By the time she caught up to them, the battle was well underway. 

“Not so tough this time, are you?!” the Black Ranger shouted. His voice was what finally gave their position away to Tommy. She watched from behind the cover of several large bushes, and caught the tail end of the fight.

She didn’t blink once. Her eyes held open by sheer awe of the battle between the five Rangers and the skeletal monstrosity that had been sicced on Angel Grove. She had to remind herself to breathe, otherwise she likely would have passed out before she could see how it ended.

Blue elbowed it in the ribs, splintering them for a few moments before the shards reformed. Pink smashed her knee against its lower back, forcing it to double over.

They were like nothing she had ever seen before. Not like the MMA matches she watched online back when she lived in New York. Not like the martial arts that she learned and practiced each week. They were so… alien. They fought with a natural grace and fluidity that she could never hope to match.

Black delivered a snap kick so powerful that it separated the head from the spine, and launched it into the air.

Her eyes flicked back and forth from Ranger to Ranger. It sank in that she was really there, just a few dozen feet from the heroes who saved the planet, and who were now saving it yet again. Even if nobody else from Angel Grove could see it, she was there to be their witness. It felt as though she had locked into place, like she was doing what she was meant to do. It felt like this was her destiny.

Yellow threw a pair of daggers, one after the other, and they smashed through the monster’s skull. Red swung his sword, and cleaved the body in half, straight down the middle. 

Tommy stared in reverent awe as the creature stumbled, and crumbled into lifeless clay. A small amount of green energy flowed down into the earth from the fallen monster’s position, and Tommy felt a tingle in her fingertips, though she paid it little mind. What she saw was far, far more important.

The Rangers demorphed, and though her view of them was obscured by the foliage, Tommy could make out a few details. A leather jacket worn by Pink. Black’s cargo pants. Red’s short brown hair. And then he turned, and she saw his face. Silently, Tommy mouthed his name.

“Jason Scott?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to get this chapter out sooner, but work and writers' block were being difficult for me. Once I decided to go with Tommy's viewpoint of events though, it all sorted itself out. Next chapter should be longer than this one, at least!
> 
> Don't forget to kudos and comment!


	9. Night Off II

“Are you certain that this girl was telling the truth? Is she a reliable witness?”

Silence hung in the air for a moment after Zordon asked his question, and Jason merely scratched at the back of his head as he searched for an answer. It was just the two of them in the Command Center, the night of Bones’ defeat. Zack, Billy, and Kim had gone back to Billy’s for the night, and Trini had split off even before then. Alpha watched from the doorway, holding his fingers to his saucer and tapping them against it nervously.

“I think so?” Jason said, not entirely sure himself. “I don’t know her, she’s new in town, but I can’t see what she’d get out of lying to us about this. She was terrified, Zordon. And Rita, well… She has that effect on people.”

Zordon cast his eyes downward, as he always did when he was deep in thought about a serious matter. Jason crossed his arms and leaned back on the morphing dias’ rail.

“I think you may be correct, Jason. Rita has survived similar conditions before, but my primary concern is how quickly she’s returned, if she indeed has.”

“On the bright side, there’s no more gold for her to turn into Goldar. It all got shipped off during the reconstruction. And we can handle putties.” 

“Still, you must be wary,” Zordon chided him. “We do not know what Rita is planning, and this creature you encountered… It’s not one of Rita’s constructs. It was more than just a mindless golem. You said it returned to clay once it was destroyed?”

“Yeah.” Jason nodded. “Clay or dirt. Something like that.”

“I may have an idea then, as to the identity of its creator. If I’m right, the five of you _must_ be careful. And I would suggest that you keep an eye on this Tommy Oliver. If Rita has returned, then I doubt she would want any witnesses running around.”

“Already ahead of you,” Jason told him with a self satisfied grin. “Trini’s keeping her company tonight, and she’s gonna keep an eye on her from now on.”

“Good.” Zordon breathed a sigh of relief, then looked to Jason with the slightest hints of a smile on the edges of his lips. “You’re shaping up to be a fine Red Ranger, Jason.”

Jason let out a small laugh, and then pushed himself off of the dias. “I’ll see you around, Zordon. I’ve got biology homework to catch up on.”

And with a wave, Jason slipped out of the command center. A few minutes later, he had leapt back out of the ravine, and into the quarry. By the time an hour had passed, he was at home, sitting up in his bed, neglecting the biology textbook that sat on his pillow. He looked outside his room, and into the hallway. His younger sister, Pearl, was playing on the floor with the cat and laughing as it swiped at her each time she tapped it on the head. Jason smiled warmly at the sight. No matter what happened, no matter whether Rita had come back or some other alien nutjob had taken her place, he was going to fight them with everything he had. He was going to do it so that Pearl could grow up safely, in a world where the bad guys _were_ stopped before it was too late. 

Keeping her safe. That was all the reason he needed.

******************************

Zack sprawled out on the couch as Kim and Billy stood by the tv, discussing what to put on. He smiled softly as he watched the spirited debate between his two friends. Billy made for the controls, only for Kim to yank it out of reach and try to move off of “Beetleborgs: Infinite Conflict”.

“Billy, I have seen this movie three times already, and if I have to watch Josh Baldwin fade from existence one more time I am going to _bawl my eyes out_ , and that’s not happening.”

“But it’s the greatest superhero movie ever made!” Billy argued. He made another go for the remote, only for Kim to fling it in Zack’s direction, where he caught it effortlessly.

“BIG! BAD! BEETLEBORGS!” Zack cried out before breaking out into a fit of giggles as he pressed play.

“I trusted you!” Kim looked at him with a mixture of horror and shock, hardly able to comprehend the betrayal. “Oh, _whatever_. Make some room for us at least, okay?”

Zack curled his legs up beneath him, freeing up two thirds of the couch for Kim and Billy to grab. He paid as much attention to the movie as he could, but so much of it was lost on him. Billy and Kim had clearly seen all of the movies that came before, but he had only been able to catch a handful. He didn’t mention that, of course, because then he’d have to explain why. And bringing up the subject of his mom, her worsening health, and how all of his paychecks at the trainyard went towards food and medication… Well, there was no need to bring the mood down. Not tonight. Not when they all had Rita’s return nagging at the back of their minds. 

So he cheered at the action, and he laughed like a hyena at the jokes, and he broke out into hysterical crying at the tragic ending. Because that’s what Zack Taylor was supposed to do.

*******************************

**Trini: Hey. You busy?**

**Tommy: Doing homework, but I’m about ready to throw my bio textbook through a wall. What’s up?**

**Trini: Meet me at the corner of Reefside and Mariner Bay.**

Trini was there, waiting for her, just like she said in the text. Sitting on a short cobblestone wall and scrolling through her phone’s music for another track as she waited for Tommy to arrive. She was still wearing her yellow jacket from earlier that day, though Tommy had ditched her own in favor of a loose fitting flannel when she got back home that afternoon. She was wearing her hair up in a messy bun, and seemed to be out of breath, though Trini wasn’t sure why.

“You alright?” 

“Yeah,” Tommy replied. She took a seat next to Trini and looked at her through the darkness. There was nobody outside but them, at least not in this part of town. The only lights came from the streetlamps, windows of various houses on the block, and the moon. The moon that watched without either of them knowing. “Just working out. I’m thinking of taking some self defense classes soon.”

“Smart,” Trini muttered.

“So what’s going on? Why’d you need to see me?” Tommy asked. She smiled slightly, a bit excited, despite what had happened just a few hours before. What she had seen, that she was never supposed to see.

“I, uh… I felt bad about ditching you earlier,” Trini lied. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and looked down at her shoes. “Wanted to make sure you got home okay.”

“Didn’t think you were the kind of girl who worried about people like that,” Tommy said, her eyes going a bit wide. Trini looked further away from her, seemingly flustered. Tommy couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“I’m fine, Trini. But… Something did happen.”

Trini looked at Tommy, finally. Concern was etched across her face, but she didn’t move beyond that. She was still as reserved as ever, but Tommy didn’t mind.

“I know I probably sound like I’m making this up, but… I ran into that alien witch lady.” Tommy looked at Trini, searching for a sign of belief of disbelief, but Trini remained stone faced. Si she elaborated. “I was going for a walk in the woods after you left for practice, and I saw her with this skeleton? She was doing something to it with her staff, and then it stalked off. That’s when she saw me.”

“What did she do?” 

“Not sure. I booked it out of there as fast as I could,” Tommy admitted. “I don’t know if she followed me or not, but it didn’t really matter.” She broke out into a grin. “The Power Rangers showed up to save me. I even got to see them kill her monster. It was so _fucking_ badass.”

Silence hung between them for a moment, and Trini just nodded wordlessly in response to the story. Still, her face betrayed no expression, but there was so much running through her head. Thoughts and feelings and worries that Tommy couldn’t see. She looked at a small, loose stone beside her hand and allowed her fingers to crawl around it. It was smooth and cold to the touch, but she held onto it when she looked back at Tommy. 

“I believe you,” she said, at long last. And Tommy believed that she believed. The pair smiled at each other in solidarity. Knowing that this was something for them to hold onto, a moment and a scrap of knowledge that nobody else had. But Trini never was one to share the entirety of her thoughts and feelings, and this moment was no exception. 

She shared an earbud with Tommy, and they listened to rock together as they walked to the beach and skipped stones in the water. Tommy knew things that nobody else knew. Nobody else but Trini. And so, when Trini told her that she was welcome to join her and her friends at Kim’s house that Friday night, Tommy happily accepted. She felt like she had a chance to get closer to something, something important. And Trini would do whatever she had to in order to keep this girl safe from the woman who haunted her own dreams.

But Trini also knew that Tommy had seen them unmorph. And that was a revelation that she didn’t know what to do with.

***************************

“Lady Rita, I am _sorry_ ,” Finnster whimpered like a frightened lamb. “My creation failed you, a-and I failed you, but I beg of you! Please, please Lady Rita, grant me another chance!”

Rita sat on a throne of shaped moonrock and regarded her minion with a silent judgement. Cold green eyes pierced right through him, straight into the deepest part of his soul, and sent a shiver down his spine. Her golden claws tapped against her armrest, and the emerald coin in her staff glowed menacingly as the craftsman pleaded with her for mercy.

“My next creation, i-it will be the one that ends them! It _will_ obtain the Zeo Crystal for you, I-I swear! A-and I still haven’t finished work on your special assignment yet! If you kill me, I’ll never be able to fini-”

“Enough.” 

A single word from the fallen Green Ranger was enough to cut through Finnster’s blathering and reduce him to silent prayer. She stood slowly and walked past him, before conjuring an image of Angel Grove with her magic. The hazy green mirage showed a pair of girls standing with their feet in the sand, flinging stones into water and sharing a peaceful, joyful moment. Both of them were familiar to her, and something about them spoke to her in a way that none of the others did. They reminded her of herself, in a way. Maybe that was why she had offered Trini a place at her side.

She looked at Finnster, and she smiled, and she cooed. “Silly little man, I don’t need you to get me the Zeo Crystal. I just need you to make another piece of cannon fodder for me! A distraction is all I need…”

She returned to her throne and stroked her chin as she thought over her plans. She wondered, if she was going to crash a party, what kind of gift should she bring?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that the Avengers movies exist in the world of Power Rangers, but like. Dude, if I can put in jokes about a Saban Cinematic Universe, you know I'm gonna. I grew up on those shows, so I feel like I have a moral obligation to do that.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you guys are still keeping up with this! We're finally getting into the good stuff, and there's sooo much more to come! Don't forget to kudos and comment! Feedback is my best motivator when it comes to putting out more chapters!


	10. The Party And The Party Crashers

Tommy stared up at Kim’s house with a mixture of amazement and trepidation. It was massive. There was no other way to put it, really. It was a large, elegant looking house by the coastline, and it had to have been bigger than any other house in the area. The driveway alone had enough space for two cars and Jason’s truck, with room for at least another vehicle. 

Tommy herself was sitting in the bed of that truck, with Trini and Zack sharing the space with her on the drive over. Taylor was annoying for sure, but in an endearing way. He was the one who decided on riding in the bed of the truck, once it became apparent that only five could be seated in the cab without someone sitting on another’s lap. Tommy and Trini joined him because… They didn’t really know why, exactly, but they had. 

“So how rich _are you_ , Hart?” Tommy asked as the other three hopped out of the truck. 

“I’m not rich,” Kim said, a bit on the defensive side. She glanced over at Tommy, then at the house. “It’s just my mom that’s rich…”

Tommy shrugged her shoulders and stuck towards the back of the group as they pushed through the front door and entered the house. The inside was about what she expected based on the outside. Expensive furniture, not a single thing out of place, not a mote of dust in sight, and the biggest tv she had ever seen, mounted on the wall of Kim’s living room. 

“We’ve got the place to ourselves until five,” Kim told everyone as she threw herself onto the living room sofa, where Trini quickly joined her. “I’m gonna order a few pizzas around then, too. Any special requests?”

“Pineapple!”

“You know you’re not allowed to have an opinion here, Zack!” Trini called out from the kitchen. She was rooting through the fridge for a drink as the others settled in. Tommy lingered between the kitchen and the living room, and found her gaze drifting towards Trini’s backside. A suspicious look from Kim snapped her attention away and kept it away, at least for the time being.

“So… What exactly are we gonna be doing tonight?” Tommy asked Jason as he passed by her. He smiled that handsome jock smile of his, and she had to remind herself that she was looking at the leader of the Power Rangers, and not just some idiot mouth breather quarterback. 

“What we do most nights. Binge bad tv, play some games, and try not to throw each other through the windows when Kim inevitably wipes the floor with us.”

Tommy had to admit, the thought of Kim Hart getting flung through a wall by Billy Cranston after an intense game of Monopoly was hard not to snicker at. Jason’s expression shifted, his smile became warmer, less put-on and more natural, when he saw that he had gotten a laugh out of Tommy. That, she thought to herself, was the Red Ranger beneath the football player. He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, then split off to join Billy on the living room couch. Or rather, _a_ living room couch, as there were two of them, along with a couple of large arm chairs. Tommy gave one more look to Trini, who was had started sitting on the kitchen counter with a can of soda and was being pestered by Zack to watch some video on his phone. 

She joined Billy and Jason just in time to watch as Billy lifted a small radio out of his school bag, followed by another, larger radio, an old dismantled flip phone, and then a watch that had been picked apart and left without most of its face. She shot Jason a confused look, which he smirked at.

“C’mon Billy, show her what you’ve been working on.”

“Hm? Oh!” Billy looked up from his things and noticed Tommy looming over the scene. He scrambled to make space on the couch for her, and laid his things out on the coffee table. “Right, Tommy Oliver! Okay. Okay, so I found this old phone in my mom’s basement, which I use as a workshop, for stuff like this. And I found this phone, and nobody was using it, so I got a couple of radios, bought a watch, and I started making a communicator watch. See?” 

He pulled his own watch off of his wrist and showed it to her. It was then that she realized its face had been replaced. Instead of a dime sized ticking clock, there was a tiny little speaker connected to the band. He pressed a button on the side, and one of the radios began to squawk and crackle loudly. Billy quickly turned down the volume on the old radio and smiled sheepishly. 

“I only got one prototype so far, but once I finish the second one I can start testing them to see if they work.”

“Holy shit…” Tommy stared at the communicator in awe. She knew that there were teen geniuses who came up with ridiculous inventions, but she never expected to find herself in the same social circle as one. 

“Cool, right?” Jason’s smirk returned and he leaned forward to grab a small pair of pliers from Billy’s bag. “So, which radio is getting dissected tonight?”

Tommy took a seat between them and was quickly entrusted with a screwdriver and a tiny flashlight, while Billy got out some soldering equipment, and began handing out instructions. Tommy did her best to keep up as they dismantled the radios so that Billy could pick out needed components for later use. She looked at Jason, utterly lost and hoping he’d have some sort of advice, but he just shrugged and laughed, which got her to laugh, which got Billy to look up in confusion and remind them that they needed to keep working if they wanted the second communicator to be done before nightfall.

When the surgery had finally finished, an hour after it began, nurses Tommy and Jason set their tools down and breathed a mutual sigh of relief. Billy’s laser focus remained as he set the pair of watches beside one another and pressed the button on one of them. A small series of beeps played on the second watch, and Billy clapped his hands excitedly.

“Jason! Tommy! Guys! We did it!”

“Pretty sure you did it while we fumbled around like a pair of koalas,” Tommy joked. Still, when Billy raised his hand for a high five, she gave it happily, as did Jason. 

“Okay, um, Jason, you take this one and go outside,” Billy instructed, wrapping one of the communicators around Jason’s wrist and pushing him off.

“Why do I have to go outside?”

“We gotta test the range on them! I think they should be able to reach across town, but I’m not sure yet.”

Jason sauntered on out the front door, and Tommy watched through the window as he made his way down the driveway, across the street, and stood by a street sign on the other side. She looked back at Billy, who was holding his own communicator up to his ear. Suddenly, the series of beeps played again, and Jason’s voice came through clearly.

“Can I come back inside now?”

Billy smiled brightly and clapped his hands again as Tommy laughed. They high-fived again.

“So… Any chance I can get one of these?” Tommy asked, only half serious.

“Well, yeah,” Billy told her. “I was gonna make enough for all my friends, and you’re one of them.”

Once Jason returned, Billy told him to hold on to the communicator, and reminded him to test it again after he returned home. Tommy looked back towards the kitchen, only to see Kim, Zack, and Trini peering out from behind a wall. Once they were spotted, the trio burst into laughter and joined them in the living room. Tommy had a good feeling about this night. She hadn’t expected anyone but Trini to welcome her so openly, but already she felt like a part of the group.

******************************

Rita lounged on her throne as Finnster once again mewled before her like a frightened animal with his belly upturned. She had grown tired of this behavior days ago, and was hoping it would cycle back around to enjoyable again. She checked in on the Rangers again, and saw that they had gathered. Pink, Blue, Red, and Tommy were inside, playing some game on the tv. Blue and Red were on edge as Tommy and her teammate gloated from their mounting success. But Black and Yellow were out in the back, sitting on the steps of a wooden deck with their feet in the grass, having a heart to heart, which Rita watched with interest.

“You tell her yet?” Zack asked. He looked at Trini with a face that betrayed no expression, a rarity for him.

“Of course not. I don’t even know if she likes girls,” Trini said quietly. She rubbed at her arm and looked off into the distance, over the bay. 

“No way to know if you don’t ask her out.”

“And if it freaks her out? I don’t want her to think I’m some creepy lesbian…”

“Do you even hear yourself right now, T? This is Kim you’re talking about. Worst case scenario, maybe someone can’t perform for a little while. But we’d work through it.”

“If you refer to morphing like that again, I’ll stab you with my daggers.” Still, the innuendo got the smallest of smiles out of Trini. She ran a hand through her hair and sniffed, holding herself back from crying. Just about every time she talked to Zack about these things, about her feelings for girls, she started to tear up. She hated it.

Zack raised his hands and conceded the point, but reaffirmed his original statement. “She’s not gonna freak out. I’m in your corner here, and if you told the other guys they would be too. If things do go south, I’m telling you, I’ll be there for you. But I don’t think it’ll go that way. If you have anything to worry about, it’s wall-dad getting on your case for “fraternizing with a fellow Ranger” or whatever.”

Trini took a deep breath and exhaled. She watched as the sun began to crawl downwards towards the water. Kim was probably going to order the pizzas soon. She looked at Zack, finally, and saw him looking back at her. She nodded her head and thought about what he had said.

“I just don’t think I’m ready yet…”

“Alright. But when you are, let me know how it goes. I’ll bring the celebratory and/or comfort ice cream.”

She smirked, just a touch, and gave Zack a hug. He wrapped his arms around her and patted her on the back. When they pulled apart, he snatched the beanie off of her head and put it on his own, then scrambled for safety as she tore after him to reclaim it.

Rita frowned at the scene and felt a pang in her heart. She shouldn’t watch them like this, she reminded herself. It reminded her too much of her own team, and she didn’t need to be bogged down by pointless memories. She snapped her fingers, and Finnster looked up at her, awaiting instructions.

“Did you finish with your latest monster?”

“Y-yes, Lady Rita! My Mighty Minotaur will surely crush them beneath his hoof! I-I’ll go fetch him, so we can send him down to destroy them!”

“I doubt he will!” Rita called out after Finnster as he scurried off to transform his clay creation into a proper monster. “But who cares about whether or not this one is competent. All I need is something to screw with them while I get the real work started.”

She approached the balcony of her palace and looked down at the sprawling landscape of the moon. She held out her staff and shut her eyes as she cast her spell. When she opened her eyes again, a cluster of putties milled about below. Once Mighty Minotaur was ready, his backup would be waiting for him.

******************************

“I’m telling you guys, Tommy cheats!” Zack insisted, pointing an accusatory finger at her as they came up from Kim’s basement.

“How do you cheat at pool?” Tommy asked, tossing her head back and grinning, still proud of her crushing victory.

“Magnets.”

“Magnets?”

“Magnets.”

“...Sure. Magnets.” 

The friendly argument came to an end as they entered the kitchen and saw Jason set a stack of pizza boxes down on the stove. All six teenagers took a moment to pause and take in the divine smell of melting cheese on top of tomato sauce. The moment of peace was broken when Tommy lunged for the first slice, only to find herself fighting for it with Kim. Much to her frustration, the former cheerleader was terrifyingly fast and dexterous, and managed to keep the slice. For just a moment, an intense scowl flashed across Tommy’s face before she suppressed the anger she felt and swallowed the bile in her throat. She put her friendly face back on and waited for everyone else to take some food before she grabbed a slice of her own.

As they ate, Tommy noticed Jason split off on his own, and slip out the back sliding doors, onto the deck. Tommy followed after him, the image of the Red Ranger turning into Jason still firmly holding a place in her memory. She caught him watching the waves crash against the shoreline, off in the distance. He had a soft, wistful look about him, like something was weighing heavily on his mind, but it failed to make him sink. She approached quietly, only the sounds of her socks padding across the wood alerting him to her presence. She stood, with her plate on the railing, and ate her slice of pizza as he ate his own, allowing the silence to become comfortable before even considering breaking it.

“So, uh… How long have the five of you been hanging out, then?”

Jason paused and considered the question. He rolled it around in his head, then found an explanation that was serviceable. “Detention, early on in the school year. I pulled some stupid prank-”

“I’ve heard about the cow. Did you really-”

“That part wasn’t me!” he defended himself, laughing through the words. Tommy broke out a grin herself, before he continued. “You can ask the others how they got there if you want, but to make a long story short… I got some asshole to leave Billy alone, and the two of us started hanging out after that. Ran into Kim in the woods later that night, and she sort of slid in with us after that. Over the next few weeks, we got to know Zack and Trini too.”

“That doesn’t exactly explain why a jock and his nerd buddy suddenly get along with the school’s queen bee, a new kid, and someone who I didn’t even realize went to our school until a week ago.”

“...Let’s just say we all needed new friends. We were all kinda aimless and alone. But we found each other and things worked out for the best.”

“D’aw, that’s really, really sappy,” Tommy teased, sticking her tongue out playfully when he looked up at her.

Jason laughed and shook his head. Tommy set her plate down, her food finished, and circled around behind Jason so she could take a seat next to him, while he wiped his hands off on his jeans. She looked out at the water with him, and she wondered why she had never done this before. It was so peaceful, so calming. It put her mind at ease, when so few things were capable of such a feat. Unknown to her, Jason was thinking the exact same thing. She glanced back at him, and questions began to surface in her mind.

Why, of all people, Kimberly Hart? Didn’t he know about the events that led up to her landing in detention as well? Didn’t he care? Did any of them? Should she even tell him that she knew who he was? But then she looked at the crashing waves again, and the questions and the storm clouds faded from her mind. He was a better person than she had ever given him credit for. Kinder, gentler, and more understanding than any jock she had known before. If anyone deserved to be a Power Ranger more than him, it’d be Trini. Or herself, maybe. But of course, she knew that last one wasn’t a reality. Still, good that a decent person like him was under that armor, keeping a watchful eye over the innocent people in town. 

She didn’t need to tell him she knew, did she? It was enough that they were out there, protecting people. She could help him keep the secret, if it came down to it, but he didn’t need to know that she knew. So she stopped herself from telling him what she had seen. 

Or at least that was the plan, until a series of large objects crashed into the water ahead. Jason and Tommy leapt from their seats and shifted into more defensive positions, and they watched as a small cluster of rock monsters rose from the water and trudged onto land. At the head of the pack was a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull, holding a battle axe in his right hand and pointing it at Jason. Jason briefly looked from the monsters to Tommy as the question of what to do ran through his mind. Expose his identity to protect her? Or keep it a secret, and try to get her to safety before doubling back and joining his team? But Tommy took that choice away.

“What are you waiting for? Turn into the Red Ranger!” She tried to shout while whispering, so as not to blow his secret to those still inside. A chill ran down Jason’s spine as Tommy’s words sank in, but he knew he could have that conversation later. After this had been dealt with. 

He leapt down onto the grass that bridged the house and the shoreline, clothes-lining two putties as he landed. They broke apart into rock and dust, but their cohorts didn’t fight back. Instead, the rest of the putties scattered, and began invading the house, while the Minotaur swung its ax at Jason with enough force to send him flying, even as he blocked the blow. 

Jason slammed into the deck, and the air was sucked from his lungs on impact. He shook his head and composed himself, just in time to see the Minotaur swing again, this time straight down at his head. He kicked off of the wood and hurtled past the monster, then spun around and kicked it in the back, knocking it into the same spot it had knocked him. Before it could respond, he punched it in the back of the head, but this time it tanked the blow, and kicked him hard enough to send him into the water. He stood up and glared at the beast, both of them taking a moment to catch their breath and approach one another for another bout. But this time, Jason wasn’t going to hold back.

As they fought, Tommy ran indoors and shouted to grab everyone’s attention. “Hey! Monsters! Outside! Fucking run!”

For a brief moment, nobody moved. Looks were exchanged as the Rangers wondered what to do. The silence was broken when a small horde of putties crashed through the sliding glass door, prompting all four of them to bolt for the door, Trini dragging Tommy along after them. There was an unspoken agreement among the Rangers. Get Tommy to safety, then circle back and join Jason, hopefully before the monster killed him. 

One of the putties flung itself forward, landing between the teenagers and splintering the group as they reached the street outside. Tommy and Trini went one way to avoid it, while Kim, Billy, and Zack ran in the other direction. Trini made a small gesture with her head, silently urging her team to go back and help Jason, while she stayed with Tommy and protected her from the putties. Trini shoved Tommy into some bushes, then spun around and backhanded one of the putties, smashing its face off and leaving it stumbling around, directionless. She took advantage of its vulnerability and delivered a snap kick that finished it off. She turned around, expecting to see Tommy angrily crawl out of the bushes, only to find that her powerless friend wasn’t there at all. 

She had failed to spot a pair of putties pull Tommy out of the bushes and drag her elsewhere, with rocky hands covering her mouth to prevent her screams from being heard.

“Shit!” Trini looked around for any sign of Tommy, her worry growing larger and larger, like a series of weights being dropped onto her back. She spotted a small trail of leaves and twigs, likely torn from the bushes as Tommy was kidnapped. They didn’t go on for very long, only a foot or so in one direction, but at least she knew where to run.

******************************

The putties released Tommy in the parking lot of a local diner, not far from Kim’s house. She fell to the ground and tried to scramble away from them, backwards and on hands and feet. But she stopped when one of them approached her, extending an arm which held… Her school bag? Neither of the twin golems made a move to harm her, instead just repeating the gesture until she took the bag from the putty that held it. She watched, holding her breath without meaning to, as the monsters relaxed and made sure that she wasn’t harmed. Once they saw that she was fine, the putty on the right seemed to, well… Smile at her. It was a lopsided grin, made of upturned rock and compacted dust. It sort of reminded her of a demented muppet. 

She looked at the other putty, and it raised an open, eight fingered hand, as if to ask for a high five. She gave one, tentatively, but had to smile when the creature responded with exuberant joy. It was almost like an excitable child. But the question kept nagging at her. The question of _why_ they weren’t currently killing her in a frenzy of debris and stone. 

“What the hell is going on…?” Tommy asked in a quiet, panicking voice. As if to answer, one of the putties patted her on the head, trying to reiterate its friendly nature. Her fear turned to a slight trust, and she smiled at the creatures. “Why’d you come for me?” she asked, in a low, soft voice. 

Before any sort of answer could come to her, a gold and silver dagger flew threw the head of the putty further from Tommy, causing it to crumble into a heap on the ground. Tommy gasped, just in time for another dagger to land in the back of the putty that had given her her bag. It turned around and roared, only to be smashed to moon dust by the Yellow Ranger’s knee as she dropped down on top of it. Tommy cried out, yelling at her savior to stop, but it fell on deaf ears. The Yellow Ranger stomped on the first putty’s body, making sure that it wouldn’t get back up. With the killing done, she turned to Tommy and found the teenager filling with rage. 

“What the hell is your problem?! They weren’t hurting me!” 

“What? I-”

“Get the fuck out of here! Just… Just fucking go!” Tommy pointed off in the direction of Kim’s house, and glared even harder at the Yellow Ranger, her face contorting itself with rage as she seethed. “Help your fucking leader and leave me alone.”

Trini fell silent, backed away, and then turned around and went back to rejoin her team. She felt a pang of guilt, even though she knew she had done what was needed. Tommy had been in danger, so why was she upset at being saved? Why did she say that the putties were harmless? And.. did she even know it was Trini under the helmet? She knew Jason was the Red Ranger, she had said as much, but… Maybe she didn’t know as much as Trini thought she did.

******************************

Jason tried to steer the fight away from Kim’s house. He really did. Unfortunately, Mighty Minotaur had no such qualms, and it was happy to throw the Red Ranger through a wall and into the living room. Jason summoned his sword just in time to block a blow from the beast’s ax, and took the opening to kick the Minotaur in its gut, knocking it back and forcing it to double over in pain. He tried to stab it through the middle, but it deflected with its ax, and then bashed the butt of the weapon into Jason’s helmet, knocking the Red Ranger off balance and putting him back on the defensive. It would have been able to finish him with the next swing of its ax, if not for a certain Black Ranger tackling it back outside, screaming all the while. 

Billy helped Jason steady himself as Kim dashed through the wreckage of her house and leapt outside after Zack and Mighty Minotaur. She flew through the air and delivered a flying kick to the beast as soon as it stood up, sending it back to the ground, where she stomped on it several more times. Zack rolled over and pushed himself back up, and the pair double teamed the monster until Jason and Billy joined them. 

Once the four Rangers were together, the monster roared, then hunched over and ran in Jason’s direction in an attempt to gore him with its horns. He simply held out his sword and allowed the beast to run itself through on the blade, ending the threat instantly. The Rangers demorphed as Mighty Minotaur crumbled to harmless clay, and the rush of battle left their systems. 

“I’m gonna kill Rita,” Kim muttered as she returned to the house and surveyed the damage. It was salvageable, but still thoroughly wrecked. The wall that led to the deck was smashed in several spots, seeing as nobody was content to reuse one of the already created holes, in favor of making new ones. Luckily, the damage was mostly contained to the living room, and her TV was fine.

Her TV fell to the ground and its screen shattered on impact.

“I am going. To _kill_. Rita.”

******************************

Tommy returned sometime after Trini, having taken several minutes to cool off after her clash with the Yellow Ranger. She found the breakfast club sitting on Kim’s couch, surrounded by the wreckage of the living room, looking like they had just gotten the life sucked out of them.

She stepped around pieces of drywall, an upturned coffee table, and the destroyed television, then sat on the floor directly in front of the sofa, and stared at the wall where the TV used to be with the others. 

“So, uh….”

“The Power Rangers fought a monster through my living room.”

“Gotcha. You gonna be able to replace all this?”

“Probably. Might get yelled at by my mom though.”

“That sucks.”

“Yep.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I think the Yellow Ranger might hate me now.”

“That sucks.”

“Yep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! This chapter ended up being a fair bit longer than I expected, but I'm pretty happy with it. Please, don't forget to leave kudos and comment!


End file.
